Name your all-time three favorite novels, in order. No more than three, please

Cafe Society
101

The Milagro Beanfield War, John Nichols

Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins

The Fool’s Progress, Edward Abbey

102

Ah, I wondered if & should’ve sensed a fellow Doper would have my #1 somewhere on their list & am honored to see a fellow afficionado of the unique quasi*psychedelia of Tom Robbins.

My List:

  1. Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
  2. Neuromancer - William Gibson
  3. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
103
  1. Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
  2. Shogun by James Clavell
  3. The Sheriff of Nottingham by Richard Kluger
104

In no particular order:

The Golden Globe by John Varley

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

105

This one missed my list by a cat whisker.

(and I’m aware lots of folks hate it.)

mmm

106

I was living in Budapest at the time I read it – among the expats a little personal library system developed, and I was browsing a friend’s bookshelf and found the title intriguing. I had never heard of the book before and went into it completely blind, except for reading the blurb on the back cover. Funny as hell, and I could just not put that down, but I do tend to like stories with protagonists/narrators one would not typically identify with. (Also, see: Lolita).

Might be worth a reread soon. But I’ve also lately been tempted to reread Hitchhiker’s Guide and see if it’s still as funny some 30 years on.

107

Finally! I had to scroll through the first third of the thread to find anyone mentioning any of my favorites. (Though even these don’t make my Top Three.)

I’ll take

  1. Something by Mark Twain, e.g. Huckleberry Finn.
  2. Something by Tom Wolfe, e.g. The Bonfire of the Vanities.
  3. a modern thriller, perhaps le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

That’s assuming novellas are disallowed. I prefer novellas, so if allowed I’ll pick

  1. Hemingways’s The Old Man and the Sea
  2. London’s Call of the Wild
  3. Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground

I’m sorry. With the novella/novel distinction left ambiguous I felt I had no choice but to respond as I did.

108

Oh shit!!! I forgot about Master and Margarita. That really should be my 2, bumping everyone else down one.

109

Ha! I didn’t even notice.

110

All the Kings Men - Robert Penn Warren

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

111

Wow. I didn’t think anybody had ever heard of Cloudsplitter, a gigantic book by Russell Banks with a gigantic subject, John Brown and the anti-slavery movement. I seriously considered it for my list.

Rochester, like many cities, did an “If Everybody Read the Same Book” event. I’d never heard of Banks before he was made that year’s author, although his The Sweet Hereafter, much shorter and easier to read, was the book. I was a volunteer doing scrub work behind the scenes and our “pay” was a stack of signed Russell Banks trade paperbacks. Cloudsplitter is up there with Huck Finn as a super-important must read of American historical fiction.

Octavia Butler was the author the next year, and I got to drive her around and have lunch with her. Much more fun than Banks.

112

I’ve gotten her signature on her books twice (for several books each time). Once was at Balticon in Baltimore. The other time was at a bookstore in Washington, D.C. which apparently doesn’t exist anymore. I just finished reading her book Fledgling which was the only one of her books I own that wasn’t signed by her. It was published about five months before she died, so she probably didn’t have time to do a lot of signing sessions for it.

113

Just added the sample to my Kindle. Thank you!

114

Same, so for me, and in no particular order:

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson

Existence - David Brin

The Boat of a Million Years - Poul Anderson

I’ve read each of these enough times that I’ve actually repurchased Aurora, and, Boat of a Million Years because my first purchases have started falling apart, and I’m looking for a new Existence as well.

115
  1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  2. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
  3. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
116

Third: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Second: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

First: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

117

Indeed! I regret not including it in my list.

118

I find few duplications through the whole list (except for Lord of the Rings, natch!). Impressive diversity.

119
  1. The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (really kind of a stand-in for all the Holmes stories)
  2. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
  3. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

I seriously cannot believe I am the first person to list Conan Doyle.

120

LotR beats out Catch-22, 12-9.